Tuesday, November 23, 2010

This is the third in a series of six posts dedicated to Bloom’s Taxonomy: Teaching Higher Order Thinking Skills with Interactive Online Content. Two previous posts on remembering and understanding can be viewed here and here.

Level Three: Apply

This level includes the skills of solving, illustrating, showing, classifying and completing. These activities require students to use their knowledge in a new situation. Students move beyond basic identification or comprehension and apply their knowledge of one or more concepts to answer more complex questions.

Students use their knowledge of perimeter and area to figure out the number of paving slabs needed to enclose a rectangular garden area.

To learn about more activities for applying and to discover resources for remembering, understanding, analyzing, evaluating, and creating, sign up for StarrMatica’s free Webinars: Bloom’s Taxonomy for K-2 and Bloom’s Taxonomy for 3-6: CLICK HERE TO REGISTER

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

This is the second in a series of six posts dedicated to Bloom’s Taxonomy: Teaching Higher Order Thinking Skills with Interactive Online Content. The first post on remembering can be viewed here.

Level Two: Understand

This level includes the skills of explaining, predicting, restating, discussing, outlining and comparing. These activities go one step beyond basic skill building by requiring students to demonstrate comprehension of a concept.

Students use their knowledge of patterns to complete a given pattern. They can choose from three levels of difficulty.

To learn about more activities for understanding and to discover resources for remembering, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating, sign up for StarrMatica’s free Webinars: Bloom’s Taxonomy for K-2 and Bloom’s Taxonomy for 3-6:CLICK HERE TO REGISTER

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

I have had the privilege over the past five years of observing interactive whiteboards being used in hundreds of classrooms through the United States. Through my observations, by reading blog posts, by viewing interactive lessons shared on manufacturers’ sites, and by talking with teachers across the country, a shared question has emerged that needs to be addressed: How do I use this technology to encourage higher order thinking skills?

Most of the interactive lessons I have observed and see on lesson sharing sites are basic skill building activities using matching, drag and drop, or multiple choice questions. Those activities do have a place in the classroom--particularly during center time when students are completing an activity that has been designed for independent practice or during guided practice when you are conducting a formative assessment to see which students require additional assistance.

I encounter interactive lessons that are built to encouraging higher order thinking skills much less frequently than their skill building counterparts. Part of the reason may be that at first glance, it seems more difficult and time consuming to plan an interactive lesson that encourages higher order thinking skills. But, it doesn’t have to be!

At StarrMatica, our mission is to provide teachers with a library of standards-aligned interactive content so they can spend less time searching for content or creating original lessons and more time planning how to integrate interactive content effectively into their daily classroom instruction. To that end, this is the first in a series of six posts that will be dedicated to Bloom’s Taxonomy: Teaching Higher Order Thinking Skills with Interactive Online Content.

Level One: Remember

This level includes the skills of listing, writing, telling, naming, describing, matching and labeling. These are the basic skill building types of activities that many teachers utilize on their interactive whiteboards. There are several benefits to using interactive online content at the remembering level.

It saves time. As a teacher, you don’t have to spend time creating an activity in your interactive whiteboard software.

An online activity can add colorful graphics, sound effects, and animations that will get the attention of your students and motivate them to participate.

Some online activities keep a score record so you can review results.

Some online activities provide several levels of difficulty, two player modes or competition versus students in other locations.

Here are two examples of online activities for remembering:

K-2-- Bubble Burst
This activity encourages students to name odd numbers by quickly bursting bubbles labeled with the correct answers in a game environment.

This activity encourages students to identify 2-D shapes by placing them in the containers labeled with the correct names before being caught by the evil robots.

To learn about more activities for remembering and to discover resources for understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating, sign up for StarrMatica’s free Webinars: Bloom’s Taxonomy for K-2 and Bloom’s Taxonomy for 3-6:CLICK HERE TO REGISTER

About Me

Emily Starr started integrating online interactive content in her classroom instruction six years ago, and teaching with technology has been her passion ever since.

Emily left her fourth grade teaching position in 2005 to found StarrMatica Learning Systems. With Emily as company President, StarrMatica has grown to be a leading provider of interactive reading and math content and professional development for schools implementing interactive whiteboard technologies.

StarrMatica is one of District Administration's Top 100 Products of the Year for 2010.

Emily has been awarded Iowa’s Spotlight on Technology in Education Award, The Prometheus Award for Innovation in Education, and the Neal Smith Entrepreneur of the Year Award.

Emily shares her interactive content integration expertise with fellow educators at state ed-tech conferences and workshops, through online articles, and via two blogs.